Excerpt: On the Roof With Patti Smith

It was 1973. Johnny and Ferine had been steadily at it for two years. Ferine and Johnny cut out of school and spent the day listening to the Doors on Johnny’s dad’s stereo. It had been a year since Jim Morrison passed away from the stage of life. Johnny was looking at the back page of the Village Voice when he noticed something interesting: Memorial to Jim Morrison, Saturday, on the roof of a tenement on Greene Street in Chinatown. It would be held by someone named Patti Smith.

On Friday, the thirteenth of July, 1973, Patti Smith was giving a poetry reading on the roof of underground filmmaker, Jack Smith’s loft at Greene Street near Canal Street in Chinatown, Manhattan. Johnny went with Ferine to celebrate Jim Morrison on the second anniversary of his passing. Jim Morrison was Johnny’s hero and he was curious to see how another poet would pay tribute to him. Johnny had spent July 3^rd, the day Jim Morrison disappeared (Johnny had refused to believe he was dead) playing every Doors record he had, inviting friends to sit Shiva with him, drinking beer, smoking grass and hash, the way Jim would have wanted it to be.

Johnny didn’t know or care who Patti Smith was; she had yet to record and was not known to anyone but a few underground artists in the Andy Warhol scene. He just hoped she would do justice to Jim and maybe sing a Doors song or two, Instead, Johnny ended up being the star that evening.

Twenty odd people sat on the floor of the hot flat roof. The wait was indefinite as the artist, unbeknownst to all, sat with friends like a spectator, and said nothing. Finally, a man with a camcorder turned the light on Patti. She stood up and started reciting. The camera followed her as she moved laconically around the small roof like she was on downers, occasionally looking up and striking poses. Everyone seemed fascinated watching the tall skinny chick in a death shroud that couldn’t carry a tune when the poems she sang. Did she know someone? Who was this Jack Smith and why would he let her up on his roof? Where did she get the nerve to put on this poetry reading? Johnny and the onlookers were expecting something more, at least a Doors song.

In between poetry readings, a young woman came around the squatting audience with a wicker basket asking for donations, donations Johnny doubted she really needed. He clapped his hands; he started clapping his hands, slowly clapping his hands. Ferine joined in.

“My wild love went riding; she rode all the day-ay, she rode to the devil, and asked him to pay-ay…” Others sitting on the roof joined in clapping along slowly. “The devil was wiser, it’s time to repent, he asked her to give back, the money she spent…”

Patti Smith looked over, hesitantly, and then deliberately paid no attention to Johnny. She turned to chat with a man whom she knew. Johnny later, after Patti became famous, recognized him as her guitarist, Lenny Kaye. It seemed like they were discussing what they could do about stealing back the audience from this young man with long brown hair, in the black t-shirt, black jeans and construction boots.

The camcorder shut down. The light was turned off. Johnny wasn’t filmed or recorded. He remained in the dark, singing with others clapping and humming along with verbal percussion. “She rode and she rested, she rode for a while, then stopped for an evening, and laid herself down…” Patti went downstairs through the tarred roof well, probably to the piss factory. She got back just as the small crowd was applauding Johnny.

Patti graciously thanked the anonymous donor with the impromptu song and went back to her agenda. Someone in the crowd requested that she sing a Doors song or a selection from The Lord and the New Creatures. She relented but refused. “There’ll be a surprise, but wait,” she said, like a mother scolding her naughty children, and she went into a reading of a poem she said she had just written for Jim. The audience behaved, sat back on their graveled tar sheets, and listened politely. Johnny was surprised at how contrived it was, how so non-spontaneous while pretending to be so

Johnny Livewire’s fire was extinguished; all that was left was the smoke. Everyone could see there was something hot there, but the source was snuffed out. Ferine felt badly for him; but life went on.

Johnny had a strange reaction watching Patti Smith that evening. The same way Patti felt in recalling her experience her book, Just Kids, in seeing Jim Morrison for the first time:

“Everyone around me seemed transfixed, but I observed his every move in a state of cold hyper-awareness. I remember this feeling much more clearly than the concert. I felt, watching Jim Morrison, that I could do that. I can't say why I thought this. I had nothing in my experience to make me think that would ever be possible, yet I harbored that conceit. I felt both kinship and contempt for him. I could feel his self-consciousness as well as his supreme confidence. He exuded a mixture of beauty and self-loathing, and mystic pain, like a West Coast Saint Sebastian. When anyone asked how the Doors were, I just said they were great. I was somewhat ashamed of how I had responded to their concert.” (P.59) Johnny knew just how she felt.